Abstract:
The authorship of the Naṣīḥat al-mulūk of Pseudo-Māwardī has attracted
considerable attention since Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Munʿim Ah․
mad refuted its attribution
to al-Māwardī in the introduction to his edition of 1988 and at greater length in
a subsequent dedicated monograph. In the former publication, Ah․
mad tentatively
suggested the authorship of Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (d. 322/934). In a recent
article, Hassan Ansari, returning to the question of the mirror’s authorship, has
proposed its composition by a student of the Muʿtazilī theologian Abū l-Qāsim
al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931). The present article proposes that the mirror, produced in
Balkh, reflects close associations with both Abū Zayd and Abū l-Qāsim, who
studied together in their youth and remained friends and colleagues throughout
their lives. Both men served in the brief administration of the dihqān and commander
Aḥmad b. Sahl (d. 307/920), appointed governor of Khurasan, and both
spent the latter periods of their lives in Balkh. The article argues for the book’s
participation in the Kindian tradition, in which writings on the subject of siyāsa
featured prominently. Pseudo-Māwardī’s Naṣīḥat al-mulūk provides one of the
few extant sources for this body of writings, and illuminates the intellectual-cultural
trajectory that passes from al-Kindī to al-ʿĀmirī.
Machine summary:
1515/islam-2016-0002 Downloaded from De Gruyter Online at 09/24/2016 04:32:42PM via Freie Universität Berlin He concluded his remarks with the tentative suggestion that Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, a mirror for princes, might represent the work of Abū Zayd Aḥmad b.
Aḥmad, see Marlow, Wisdom and Politics in Tenth-Century Iran, Edinburgh University Press (forthcoming), Volume I, Chapter One. 13 On the likelihood of a Balkhī setting for the work’s composition, see Marlow, “Among Kings and Sages: Greek and Indian wisdom in an Arabic mirror for princes”, Arabica, 60 (2013): 1‒57, and Wisdom and Politics, Volume I, Chapter Two. 14 It should be noted that Ansari also acknowledges the possibility that Abū Zayd’s works of siyāsa might have left an impression on Naṣīḥat al-mulūk (“Yek andīsheh-nāmeh-yi siyāsī”, 13).
²³ Among the works of al-Balkhī, most writers, from Ibn al-Nadīm onwards, list a Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-kabīr and a Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-ṣaghīr; al-Ṣafadī (696‒764/1297–1363) refers to a Kitāb al-Siyāsa composed by Abū Zayd al-Balkhī for a certain Yānis al-Khādim, who was at that time governor of Balkh (wa-huwa 20 Al-Kindī describes the subject matter of the Nicomachaean Ethics as “the moral dispositions and discipline of the self by (the cultivation) of virtuous ethical habits and withdrawal from vice” (fī akhlāq al-nafs wa-siyāsatihā bi-l-akhlāq al-fāḍila wa-l-tabāʿud ʿan al-radh[ā]la) (Risālat al-Kindī fī kammiyyat kutub Arisṭūṭālīs wa-mā yaḥtāju ilayhi fī taḥṣīl al-falsafa, in: Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafiyya, ed.
⁶⁵ Pseudo-Māwardī’s affinity with the tradition of Abū Zayd al-Balkhī emerges particularly from a comparison of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk with the remnant of al-Balkhī’s Kitāb al-Siyāsa recorded in al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-dhakhāʾir of al-Tawḥīdī.